In the wake of a 3 hour Internet outage on Sep 18, OIT has made changes to the university's Domain Name Service (DNS) to prevent a similar outage from happening again.

DNS normally is an invisible part of the Internet, quietly translating names like ohio.edu or apple.com into numeric addresses that computers, smart phones, and other devices can use to communicate. On Sep 18, that service became quite visible when a surge in requests for Apple's newly released iOS 7 exposed a weakness in the university's configuration.

"Our team has made several changes over a period of days to harden this critical part of our infrastructure," said Joe Lalley, senior associate vice president of IT and Administrative Services. "I do feel we are in a much better situation now that will minimize the chance of a recurrence."